Individuality

I believe in individuality. It is your identity, what makes you different from everyone else, and who you are. No one should tell you who to be, who to date, how to act, dress, talk, or anything else. I found my individuality when throughout my seventh grade year in middle school, I noticed how everyone spoke and dressed very similarly. The majority of guys wore saggy pants and oversized T-shirts, while most girls wore designer brand names such as “babyphat.” No one had his or her own unique personality, and everyone went in the same direction. During this year I stood up for myself at a school dance when a girl held me tightly by the wrist and told me that I could not dance with some guy that she didn’t like, but I pulled away and ignored her. That one swift action, I realized later on, had changed my perspective on people and life in general. Going through my eighth grade year, I was proud to be myself, unique, different, sometimes a leader, but most of all an individual.

Since then, I have entered high school. During my Intro Art class, my sophomore year, we had to make up a quote to describe ourselves. Nothing could enter my mind besides what had happened that one night in seventh grade, so I chose this one quote for my own: “I have my own Individuality, and no one or anything can change that.” Now that it is the end of my sophomore year, I am thankful that that one incident had happened in seventh grade because I know now that if it hadn’t, then I’d probably be “in the crowd.” So I believe in individuality because it makes me who I am and like no one else.

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.